Two seemingly unrelated pieces of news caught my eye this week. First, Stanford will be instituting a policy of waiving tuition for families making less than $100,000 per year in an effort to promote diversity. Meanwhile on the country's other coast, another one of the country's most elite schools is struggling with what exactly "promoting diversity" actually means.

Harvard is currently facing a lot of backlash for its new "trial policy" of restricting one of its gyms to "women only" hours so that Muslim women can workout without "offending their sense of modesty by exercising in front of the opposite sex".

Nick Wells, a junior at Harvard who wrote an opinion piece in the student newspaper was quoted by the Associated Press as saying: "It's not that I am opposed to the idea of helping people in religious groups or women in general, but I just think Harvard is not being fair to people like me who live (near the gym)."

The gym, the least popular of the university's five recreational facilities, is currently only implementing "women's only hours" for six of the gym's 70 operating hours, which doesn't seem like much of an imposition to me. There has been talk of restricting only certain rooms and areas of the gym to women during these times, which I believe would be a reasonable request as long as the women are provided with access to the equipment and resources provided to other students.

The AP article also quotes Kent Blumenthal, executive director of the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association: "It seems in some ways contrary to the purpose of campus recreational programs, which is all about access," he said. But, of course, Blumenthal is willing to discredit Muslim women's access to the gym.

My conclusion? While it is certainly important for universities like Stanford to make progressive admissions policies to attract a diverse student student body, it is equally important for universities to express their commitment to diversity through accommodating the diverse needs of the student population it already has.